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Chapter
7 - How a Boy Brought the Admiral to Grief

Columbus kept sailing on from one island
to another. Each new
island he found would, he hoped, bring him nearer to Cathay
and
to the marble temples and golden palaces and splendid cities
he
was looking for. But the temples and palaces and cities
did not
appear. When the Admiral came to the coast of Cuba he said:
This,
I know, is the mainland of Asia. So he sent off Louis,
the
interpreter, with a letter to the "great Emperor of
Cathay."
Louis was gone several days; but he found no emperor, no
palace,
no city, no gold, no jewels, no spices, no Cathay--only
frail
houses of bark and reeds, fields of corn and grain, with
simple
people who could tell him nothing about Cathay or Cipango
or the
Indies.

So day after day Columbus kept on his search, sailing
from island
to island, getting a little gold here and there, or some
pearls
and silver and a lot of beautiful bird skins, feathers
and
trinkets.

Then Captain Alonso Pinzon, who was sailing in the Pinta,
believed he could do better than follow the Admiral's lead.
I
know, he said, if I could go off on my own hook I could
find
plenty of gold and pearls, and perhaps I could find Cathay.
So
one day he sailed away and Columbus did not know what had
become
of him.

At last Columbus, sailing on and troubled at the way Captain
Alonso Pinzon had acted, came one day to the island of
Hayti. If
Cuba was Cathay (or China), Hayti, he felt sure, must be
Cipango
(or Japan). So he decided to sail into one of its harbors
to
spend Christmas Day. But just before Christmas morning
dawned,
the helmsman of the Santa Maria, thinking that everything
was
safe, gave the tiller into the hands of a boy--perhaps
it was
little Pedro the cabin boy--and went to sleep. The rest
of the
crew also were asleep. And the boy who, I suppose, felt
quite big
to think that he was really steering the Admiral's flagship,
was
a little too smart; for, before he knew it, he had driven
the
Santa Maria plump upon a hidden reef. And there she was
wrecked.
They worked hard to get her off but it was no use. She
keeled
over on her side, her seams opened, the water leaked in,
the
waves broke over her, the masts fell out and the Santa
Maria had
made her last voyage.

Then Columbus was in distress. The Pinta had deserted
him, the
Santa Maria was a wreck, the Nina was not nearly large
enough to
carry all his men back to Spain. And to Spain he must return
at
once. What should he do?

Columbus was quick at getting out of a fix. So in this
case he
speedily decided what to do. He set his men at work tearing
the
wreck of the Santa Maria to pieces. Out of her timbers
and
woodwork, helped out with trees from the woods and a few
stones
from the shore, he made quite a fort. It had a ditch and
a
watch-tower and a drawbridge. It proudly floated the flag
of
Spain. It was the first European fort in the new world.
On its
ramparts Columbus mounted the cannons he had saved from
the wreck
and named the fort La Navidad--that is, Fort Nativity,
because it
was made out of the ship that was wrecked on Christmas
Day-the
day of Christ's nativity, his birthday.

He selected forty of his men to stay in the fort until
he should
return from Spain. The most of them were quite willing
to do this
as they thought the place was a beautiful one and they
would be
kept very busy filling the fort with gold. Columbus told
them
they must have at least a ton of gold before he came back.
He
left them provisions and powder for a year, he told them
to be
careful and watchful, to be kind to the Indians and to
make the
year such a good one that the king and queen of Spain would
be
glad to reward them. And then he said good-by and sailed
away for
Spain.

It was on the fourth of January, 1493, that Columbus turned
the
little Nina homeward. He had not sailed very far when what
should
he come across but the lost Pinta. Captain Alonso Pinzon
seemed
very much ashamed when he saw the Admiral, and tried to
explain
his absence. Columbus knew well enough that Captain Pinzon
had
gone off gold hunting and had not found any gold. But he
did not
scold him, and both the vessels sailed toward Spain.

The homeward voyage was a stormy and seasick one. Once
it was so
rough that Columbus thought surely the Nina would be wrecked.
So
he copied off the story of what he had seen and done, addressed
it to the king and queen of Spain, put it into a barrel
and threw
the barrel overboard.

But the Nina was not shipwrecked, and on the eighteenth
of
February Columbus reached the Azores. The Portuguese governor
was
so surprised when he heard this crazy Italian really had
returned, and was so angry to think it was Spain and not
Portugal
that was to profit by his voyage that he tried to make
Columbus a
prisoner. But the Admiral gave this inhospitable welcomer
the
slip and was soon off the coast of Portugal.

Here he was obliged to land and meet the king of Portugal
--that
same King John who had once acted so meanly toward him.
King John
would have done so again had he dared. But things were
quite
different now. Columbus was a great man. He had made a
successful
voyage, and the king and queen of Spain would have made
it go
hard with the king of Portugal if he dared trouble their
admiral.
So King John had to give a royal reception to Columbus,
and
permit him to send a messenger to the king and queen of
Spain
with the news of his return from Cathay.

Then Columbus went on board the Nina again and sailed
for Palos.
But his old friend Captain Alonso Pinzon had again acted
badly.
For he had left the Admiral in one of the storms at sea
and had
hurried homeward. Then he sailed into one of the northern
ports
of Spain, and hoping to get all the credit for his voyage,
sent a
messenger post-haste to the king and queen with the word
that he
had returned from Cathay and had much to tell them. And
then he,
too, sailed for Palos.

On the fifteenth of March, 1493, just seven months after
he had
sailed away to the West, Columbus in the Nina sailed into
Palos
Harbor. The people knew the little vessel at once. And
then what
a time they made! Columbus has come back, they cried. He
has
found Cathay. Hurrah! hurrah! And the bells rang and the
cannons
boomed and the streets were full of people. The sailors
were
welcomed with shouts of joy, and the big stories they told
were
listened to with open mouths and many exclamations of surprise.
So Columbus came back to Palos. And everybody pointed him
out and
cheered him and he was no longer spoken of as "that
crazy Italian
who dragged away the men of Palos to the Jumping-off place."

And in the midst of all this rejoicing what should sail
into the
harbor of Palos but the Pinta, just a few hours late! And
when
Captain Alonso Pinzon heard the sounds of rejoicing, and
knew
that his plans to take away from Columbus all the glory
of what
had been done had all gone wrong, he did not even go to
see his
old friend and ask his pardon. He went away to his own
house
without seeing any one. And there he found a stern letter
from
the king and queen of Spain scolding him for trying to
get the
best of Columbus, and refusing to hear or see him. The
way things
had turned out made Captain Alonso Pinzon feel so badly
that he
fell sick; and in a few days he died.

But Columbus, after he had seen his good friend Juan Perez,
the
friar at Rabida, and told him all his adventures, went
on to
Barcelona where King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were
waiting
for him. They had already sent him letters telling him
how
pleased they were that he had found Cathay, and ordering
him to
get ready for a second expedition at once. Columbus gave
his
directions for this, and then, in a grand procession that
called
everybody to the street or window or housetop, he set off
for
Barcelona. He reached the court on a fine April day and
was at
once received with much pleasure by the king and queen
of Spain.

Columbus told them where he had been and what he had seen;
he
showed them the gold and the pearls and the birds and curiosities
he had brought to Spain as specimens, of what was to be
found in
Cathay; he showed them the ten painted and "fixed-up" Indians
he
had stolen and brought back with him.

And the king and queen of Spain said he had done well.
They had
him sit beside them while he told his story, and treated
this
poor Italian wool-weaver as they would one of their great
princes
or mighty lords. They told him he could put the royal arms
alongside his own on his shield or crest, and they bade
him get
together at once ships and sailors for a second expedition
to
Cathay--ships and sailors enough, they said, to get away
up to
the great cities of Cathay, where the marble temples and
the
golden palaces must be. It was their wish, they said, to
gain the
friendship of the great Emperor of Cathay, to trade with
him and
get a good share of his gold and jewels and spices. For,
you see,
no one as yet imagined that Columbus had discovered America.
They
did not even know that there was such a continent. They
thought
he had sailed to Asia and found the rich countries that
Marco
Polo had told such big stories about.

Columbus, you may be sure, was "all the rage" now.
Wherever he
went the people followed him, cheering and shouting, and
begging
him to take them with him on his next voyage to Cathay.

He was as anxious as any one to get back to those beautiful
islands and hunt for gold and jewels. He set to work at
once, and
on the twenty-fifth of September, 1493, with a fleet of
seventeen
ships and a company of fifteen hundred men, Columbus the
Admiral
set sail from Cadiz on his second voyage to Cathay and
Cipango
and the Indies. And this time he was certain he should
find all
these wonderful places, and bring back from the splendid
cities
unbounded wealth for the king and queen of Spain.